First Drives: 2015 Chevrolet Colorado

All the truck you need.

At some point, you come to grips with the fact that you need a truck. Driving your track rat six hours to VIR may have been okay when it was also your only mode of transportation. Perhaps as you've matured, however, you've come to appreciate finery like air conditioning, a radio, and maybe even a headliner. Modern full-size pickups like the Ford F-150, the Chevy Silverado, and the Ram 1500 can tow your entire house to Tibet and back, but God help you if you have to traverse a packed Whole Foods parking lot. The solution? A truck that fits the job.

The 2015 Chevrolet Colorado and the mechanically identical GMC Canyon represent the first real effort in the mid-size truck segment in some 20 years. With a maximum tow rating of 7000 pounds and all the refinement of the full-size pickups, the new GM trucks can merrily shuck you and a toy to the track and back without drawing lesser planetary bodies into their orbits.

We'd opt for the 3.6-liter V6 over the base 200-hp, 2.5-liter, direct-injected four-cylinder. This is the same quad-cam, direct-injected V6 that normally finds itself putting power to the front wheels of any number of General Motors sedans, but intake and exhaust tuning as well as a few calibration tweaks help it turn out 305 hp at 6800 rpm and 269 lb-ft of torque at 4000 rpm in this application.

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Those numbers fall short of the engine's output in the other 3.6-liter, V6-powered, rear-drive Chevy, the Camaro, where it makes 323 hp and 278 lb-ft. The engine still likes to rev, but the torque peak in the Colorado arrives 800 rpm sooner and there's more low-end pull.

A six-speed automatic transmission and substantial aero work, including active grille shutters, help the four-wheel-drive, V6 Colorado return 20 mpg combined. That's 3 mpg better than an equivalent Nissan Frontier, but the number bests a V6, four-wheel-drive Silverado by only 1 mpg. If you're basing your decision on fuel-economy ratings alone, there's not much incentive to buy the Colorado. That said, the smaller truck doesn't give up much ground to its larger sibling in capability. The full-size V6 Silverado's tow rating is a paltry 400 pounds more than the V6 Colorado's.

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Indeed, the Colorado is a real truck in rational proportions. There's room inside for four grown adults, and a maximum payload of 1590 pounds in four-wheel-drive guise means the smaller truck is more capable than most buyers will ever need.

It's been a while since Toyota and Nissan gave their mid-size trucks a polish, and the Colorado's interior shines a harsh light on that fact. Good materials, a massive touchscreen, and a quiet cabin all make the Colorado feel two decades younger than its rivals. A suite of electronic nannies, including lane-departure warning and forward collision alert, makes this a fully modern vehicle. For the first time, you can get a mid-size truck that's more than a decontented dinosaur.

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All the cabin fanciness hasn't disguised the fact that this is still a truck. Live rear axle? Tall driving position? Big, squared-off nose? Yes, yes, and yes, and they all make the Colorado feel just like its big brother. This isn't a crossover, nor is it a pint-sized S-10—we yanked 4500 pounds worth of boat and trailer up and down the hills leading from the coast north of San Diego up to Rancho Santa Fe, and the truck never seemed taxed.

Pricing starts at $20,995, though a well-equipped Z71 with the V6, four-wheel drive, a crew cab, and a long bed costs about $35,000. Chevy expects the average transaction price to be between $5000 and $8000 less than the Silverado line—not a huge savings. If you were expecting a return to the era of the cheap pickup, sorry—that epoch is over in every way.

There's something to be said for the right tool for the job at hand, and if that job's a daily commute with the occasional towing stint, we'd have a hard time suggesting anything else.

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